Companies that use large fleets of vehicles are subject to misuse or theft of their fleet vehicles. For example, it is likely that some vehicles in a large fleet will be used by employees without authorization or will at least occasionally be subject to theft. Even employees who are authorized to use a vehicle for some purposes may, in some instances, deviate from an authorized route or otherwise make an unauthorized use of the vehicle. One way to reduce these problems is to install a monitoring system to track the location of vehicles in a fleet. Such telematics devices can enable a fleet manager to monitor the location of vehicles in the fleet to determine when they are located in un-authorized areas, or are being used at un-authorized times.
Locating, tracking and monitoring protocols are available for use in conjunction with physical boundaries and fences, as necessary, to locate, track and monitor the location and proximity of an object relative to the physical boundary. Although locating an object to be tracked may be achieved using transmitter/receiver-based technology, these types of systems have proven to be limited in their application. It becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to monitor and track an object the larger the circumscribed area becomes. Monitoring also becomes increasing difficult in an area with challenging topographical terrain.
Several solutions to the problem of tracking and monitoring objects to be tracked have been tried or implemented with varying levels of success. Widely used procedures for monitoring the movement of fleet vehicles involve the use of geo-fencing, or establishing an electronic boundary around areas of interest. Systems have been established for the detection of the theft of vehicles while they are stopped at a customers location, or at a central location such as a distribution point. In some systems the operator of the vehicle manually activates a geo-fence when the vehicle stops at a customer location. Activation of the geo-fence provides a zone, often of a set radius, around the location of the vehicle when the geo-fence is activated. Activation of the geo-fence causes a geo-locator, such as Geographic Positioning System (GPS) receiver, to turn on. While the geo-fence is activated the geo-locator determines the location of the asset on a scheduled basis and can transmit the location to a central station, where a determination is made a to whether the vehicle moves outside the geo-fence. Problems with such a system include the need for manual activation and the costs associated with transmitting location information from the asset to a central station when the geo-fence is activated. Alternatively the geo-locator can be linked with a processor on the asset where the processor determines whether the vehicle moves outside the geo-fence. Such an occurrence triggers the processor to send a message to the central location indicating that the vehicle moved through the geo-fence. This system reduces operating costs by limiting the sending of messages to those times when a geo-fence is crossed. However, this system does not address the physical limitations associated with storing geo-fences on an asset, and does not address the updating of geo-fence information on an asset.
To overcome the need to manually activate a geo-fence, systems were developed where pre-defined geo-fences were established around facilities of the fleet owner and the customers, and transportation routes between the facilities. While this makes it possible to monitor the location of a vehicle throughout the day, many additional messages would need to be sent because of the increased special coverage.
In order to reduce costs associated with sending and receiving messages, systems were developed where the geographic locations of a limited number of geo-fences were stored in memory on the asset and a processor on the asset determines whether the vehicle moves outside the geo-fence. Movement outside or through a geo-fence triggers the processor to send a message to the central location indicating that the vehicle moved through the geo-fence. A limitation of this system is that the geographic location of only a limited number of geo-fences can be stored in the memory of an asset. When geo-fences are needed that are not stored in memory on the asset, additional messages must be sent and received to obtain the geographic location of new geo-fences. In many wireless communications system charges are incurred for each message sent or received. Therefore significant charges can accrue when an asset moves among many geo-fences and their locations need to be placed or removed from memory on the asset.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method of automatically and cost effectively updating the geo-fences stored in memory of a device located on the asset.